Environmental agencies are addressing "non-attainment" areas, meaning compacted metropolitan areas, i.e. the largest cities, where motor vehicle emissions have not yet attained established environmental standards. The environmental requirement is or will require that motor fuels for consumers, within a given metropolitan radius, be modified to reduce hydrocarbon emissions and achieve cleaner burning by revising the hydrocarbon distribution and by incorporation of certain oxygenates. The oxygenate addition is to improve octane rating, to produce a smoother burning fuel and to improve combustion. The addition of oxygenates, such as methyl tertiarybutyl ether may be somewhere in the range of one-half to twenty percent by volume depending on the degree of non-attainment. In any event, these enhanced fuels will be more expensive. The possibility for substitution of a less costly non-attainment fuel arises, so close checks become important.
Responsibility lies with the refiner. Each refiner, and there are many, may employ what they believe to be a superior aromatic blend or a superior oxygenate, a superior mixture or optimum amounts in their gasolines to meet standards. Each refiner will need assurance that any condemned non-compliance fuel is the responsibility of another; in short, the refiner will need assurance that what is delivered to the consumer is what that refiner sold, and that if there is failure in compliance or other quality it is a matter of counterfeiting, tampering or cheating by another. The present invention addresses the need to effectively establish provenance not only for a large number of producers and refiners but for a large number of different hydrocarbons distributed by each producer source.
There are numerous other examples as to which provenance becomes important, from the standpoint of "not ours", the source or non-source of an oil spill, oil well leakage or unauthorized dumping; whether or not someone is surreptitiously diluting high octane with a lower octane; whether low grade motor oils are being substituted for a high grade label, or whether low quality lube fractions are employed to degrade a high priced lube of high quality, and sold at the higher price; whether low grade natural gas is being mixed with high grade methane or a natural gas otherwise degraded in terms of BTU's; whether waste dry cleaning fluid or some other cheap octane degrader is being dumped into a storage tank containing high octane gasoline, and so on.
Considering then the number of hydrocarbons (well-head crude production and transportation of crudes, gasolines, diesel fuels, higher alkanes or alkenes for organic synthetics, lube fractions and natural gas, to list partially); and then to take into account the numerous producers and refiners, the various octanes or other grades, blends, and modifications, such as non-attainment grades, it can be visualized that tagging or labelling for provenance is of enormous magnitude.
Assume five producers, five hydrocarbons, three grades or quality ratings for each, and just three "non-attainment" modifications among the five. The possibilities are: EQU (5.times.5.times.3)+(5.times.3) equal to 90.
The tag or label disclosure according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,141,692 is consequently not the answer. While that disclosure does propose labeling to identify or distinguish sources, spills and co-mingling by employing tracer compounds susceptible to chromatographic-electron capture detection (CR/ECD), the concept there falls short of a binary system of detection featured under the present invention. Further, the compounds chosen for sensitivity according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,141,692 are a disparity of chloro-compounds which are not only corrosive upon combustion, but are environmentally unacceptable.
Also, if a different detectable label or tag is to be assigned to each hydrocarbon liquid, the result is; for 100 different liquids, one must rely on 100 different labels. This, of course, falls short of the plain fact that the number of hydrocarbon liquids will be much larger in the instance of supervising for or monitoring ten different producers or refiners.